Apparent good news was announced on Sunday in the fight against the extremist Islamic State organization: The Iraqi army, backed by fundamentalist Shiite militias, managed to take the village of Jurf al-Sakhr, southwest of Baghdad, from IS fighters.

Juan R.I. Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively on modern Islamic movements in Egypt, the Persian Gulf and South Asia and has given numerous media interviews on the war on terrorism and the Iraq War. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years and continues to travel widely there. He speaks Arabic, Farsi and Urdu.

His most recent book is “The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East” (2014) and his books “Engaging the Muslim World”, “Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East” were published in 2009 and 2007.

Cole was the recipient of the Hudson Research Professorship in 2003, the Award for Research in Turkey in 1999, and the Fulbright-Hays Islamic Civilization Postdoctoral Award in 1985-86. In November 2004, he was elected president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and in 2006 was the recipient of Hunter College’s James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. At the University of Michigan, Cole served as director for the center of South Asian studies from 2009- 2012, and served as director for the center for Middle Eastern and North African studies from 2012-2013.

Cole holds a B.A. in history and literature of religions from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in Arabic studies/history from American University in Cairo. In 1984 he completed his Ph.D. in Islamic studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.